Odds and Ends in the Twilight of the Year

A few quick notes as 2008 heads towards its end and 2009 looms on the horizon.

I am one of a great many guest posters on the Fantasy Book Critic blog, offering some brief comments on stuff I read this year and stuff I might read next year.

New for 2009! The latest addition to the universe of prizes for genre books is the David Gemmell Legend Award for Fantasy. The inaugural winner will be announced in 2009, once it has been chosen by … you, the public! You can check out the long list of nominated books here (and yes, Bloodheir‘s one of them), and vote for your favourite here.

For any early-adopting, US-based, ebook geeks out there, Winterbirth has made it onto theKindle.

Most Shocking Realisation of 2008: I have reached a point – I don’t know whether it’s age-related, or career-related or just a transitory state of mind – where the single most exciting shopping experience I can have is apparently delivered by … stationery superstores. The long lines of endlessly but subtly different office chairs (ever single one of them just crying out to be sat upon, and every one of them seeming more welcoming than my current model), the packages of photocopy paper stacked in bricky towers, the notebooks – the notebooks! – of every hue and size and binding. Pens. Even better: pencils! Folders. I have no need of folders – I already have more of the things than I have stuff to put in them – but I can’t help but embark on a critical examination of their robustness, their rigidity. It’s possible I may need to get some professional help in 2009, to cure me of this strange affliction. I mean, I realise these places are sort of consumerist temples to the business of writing, and therefore bound to be of some interest to the likes of me, but I can’t help but feel there’s something vaguely unseemly and deeply uncool about finding them so … exciting.

For those who are Facebookers: you can now follow this blog, or be a part of its network, or something, over there. To be honest, I’m not quite sure what the deal is, but it’s available. Whatever it is. And you’ve already joined the gang on the Winterbirth page, right?